AppSmart Agents Embrace Cross-Selling, Add Energy, Cloud Solutions
Agents are moving beyond traditional connectivity sales as their primary business.
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Tony Cheng is the president and CEO of Washington-based Netstar. Cheng said Netstar was growing at a fast clip four years ago, so fast that it seemed good to hire a director of operations. Although Cheng carefully vetted the hire, the new employee turned out to be a disaster.
Netstar fired the hire after three months but struggled to recover from his negative impact. Cheng did find a positive alternative when his employees came to him with a request. They asked if they could form a committee representing each of the departments that would oversee day-to-day operations. Thus, Netstar found a solution to its back-office concerns.
“All this time I had the talent, and all I had to do was include them in my planning and execution,” Cheng said.
Chris Palermo, founder of Global Communications Networks (GCN), said his business grew by distinguishing between “hunters” and “farmers” on its sales team. While the hunter searches for and tackles leads, the farmer specializes in account management.
Palermo said his original team relied predominantly on the hunter, who didn’t know how to sell deeper into an existing customer.
“The hunter is off to the races. They’re looking for the next thing. They’re not interested in cultivating these slices. So our base was starting to languish,” Palermo said.
GCN brought in more “farmers,” who knew how to cultivate and grow accounts. As a result, GCN developed more trust with its customers and grew its base.
Ali Niroo, founding partner of CNSG, said on a panel that the sales cycle is moving back to where it was pre-pandemic. Most importantly, customers’ sense of urgency has slowed down from its rapid state between March and August of 2020.
Niroo said the discovery session resembles its former self. However, customers are asking themselves different questions than before. For example, how much real estate do they plan to occupy when people go back into the office? How many locations do they need? Do they trust their employees with remote work?
Although the buying process has in some ways returned to normal, Ali Niroo, founding partner of CNSG, said his company and its partners still live in a virtual world. For Niroo, video meetings can’t replace the value he found in face-to-face interaction. He said you can never underestimate the conversations that you have with suppliers and customers in the elevator or parking lot after a meeting.
“When you’re there onsite, you can detect a little bit more of body language and things of that nature,” Niroo said.
Ali Niroo, founding partner of CNSG, said CNSG has garnered a great deal of net-new business in the last year and a half. In addition, the company is conversing with many existing customers who need consultation about their existing stack.
In many cases, the customers need to cut their technology spend. Niroo said that although some consultants are loath to loose those commisions, accomodating the customer gives CNSG credibility.
“For a lot of our customers, they didn’t need a lot of the things they had. The best thing for them was to reduce their spend,” Niroo said. “A lot of suppliers didn’t like that, but understanding the situation objectively, it was the right thing for many of our customers. And that’s our job.”
Bob Duggan owns greenBee Technologies.
He said his firm generates much of its business from UCaaS. Many of its existing customers have been migrating their legacy communications to the cloud recently. However, the migration process opens the door up for cross-selling.
“Before we can even have those conversations, our customers are coming to us saying, ‘Hey, we don’t even have the LAN or WAN infrastructure in place to build upon, so let’s have those conversations first,'” Duggan said.
In addition, greenBee has been growing its energy business as well as contact center.
Bob Duggan of greenBee Technologies urged other partners to remain in constant communication with customers. Moreover, he said they need to constantly listen to their clients.
“We are that sixth man on the bench supporting that IT team,” Duggan said. “You need to be in front of them constantly.”
Bob Duggan of greenBee Technologies urged other partners to remain in constant communication with customers. Moreover, he said they need to constantly listen to their clients.
“We are that sixth man on the bench supporting that IT team,” Duggan said. “You need to be in front of them constantly.”
APPSMART UNLEASH VIRTUAL — Partners don’t need high-level technological expertise to adopt next-generation technologies and do more cross-selling.
AppSmart’s Tim Basa
That’s according to Tim Basa, AppSmart‘s vice president of sales. Basa was speaking about how traditional telco agents have adopted energy, software and other non-traditional technologies into their portfolio.
“You don’t have to be the expert; you have to be a good introducer, a good question-asker,” Basa said. “Ask what’s on the road map. What areas of the business are you trying to solve for? And then bring in experts.”
Joel St. Germain, whose company, GCG, recently signed an exclusive partnership with AppSmart, said he made the deal because he saw where technology trends are moving. He said he wanted to position his agents to grow their business.
GCG’s Joel St. Germain
“I think we all recognized that it was all moving into the cloud, and COVID-19 accelerated the adoption of cloud,” St. Germain said. “I think we’ve seen that in the channel. Trusted advisers have educated themselves to be able to make that pivot.”
St. Germain and Basa were speaking at the AppSmart Unleash event, which concluded on Wednesday.
Founder’s Perspective
AppDirect president and co-CEO Daniel Saks said face-to-face interactions have guided the sales process over the course of human history. However, the digital world has altered that trend. Since the internet’s invention, customers have been moving toward online marketplaces as their preferred method of engagement.
AppDirect’s Dan Saks
Saks said he saw this trend play out in 2008 when the Great Recession hit. While larger enterprises had the resources to sell online without ever meeting a person, many small businesses couldn’t keep up. The furniture store that the Saks family ran was one such company. Saks, who had imagined himself one day leading the family company, saw the business close its doors for good.
He went on to found AppDirect the next year. AppDirect in 2018 bought master agent WTG and merged it with also-acquired cloud services provider NeoCloud, birthing the AppSmart division.
Although Saks built AppDirect (and by extension, AppSmart) as a cloud marketplace that meets the digital buying habits of modern customers, he still places a high value on human interaction. For that reason, AppSmart pursued other master agencies like Telegration, CNSG and MicroCorp.
“The skills and expertise of technology advisers are more valuable than ever, because as you know, technology transformation is about much more than technology. It’s about people,” Saks said.
Partner Perspectives
US Network’s Mark Venuto
Take for example US Network, which partners with AppSmart. Chief operating officer Mark Venuto said the 30-year-old telco shop has evolved over the years. It initially evolved in the size of its customers, moving from SMBs to the midmarket to the enterprise. Venuto said its AppSmart partnership opened the door for cross-selling.
As a result, US Network can engage with its existing customer base on solutions – such as security – that it previously wouldn’t sell. Venuto said his company has developed more sticky customer relationships.
“It’s a huge piece of business that, 1) we’ve been missing; 2) we need the training on; and 3) we can teach all of our folks how to sell,” Venuto said.
US Network joined AppSmart’s Invest program, which gives upfront capital and residual payments to qualifying partners, who retain ownership of their business.
On Track Communications’ Bill Mansfield
Bill Mansfield, president and founder of On Track Communications, said he found a unique deal in the Invest program. On one hand, Mansfield wanted On Track – a regional master agent – to expand the resources it was offering to its subagents and help them move beyond selling only connectivity. He also was considering the timeline of his own career.
“I’m 64 years old. I wasn’t looking to continue on a day-to-day basis running the company,” Mansfield said. “I needed a partner that has my back and has my agents’ back and understood that the idea of going forward for me to provide for my family was critical.”
View the slideshow above to see additional commentary from partners. You can also read our Day 1 recap.
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